


Exposure

by BlueGirl22



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Underage Drinking, also like steer clear if you've got emetophobia, honestly whether the suicide happens at all is up to you I just tagged it to be safe, no I didn't makeup sabrina she's mentioned in the show, olivia puckett says that's who she plays so that's how I picture her, sorry :) :) :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:07:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueGirl22/pseuds/BlueGirl22
Summary: Evan expects the first day back at school after his letter is released to the public to be bad, plain and simple. He expects it, and the next few weeks, to be truly abysmal. He doesn't like abysmal, obviously, but he can handle it. What he can't handle is the school newspaper publishing an article that airs out all of the secrets he'd tried so desperately to hide.***@groundhoglesbian on tumblr, when I asked for prompts, replied, "Oooh, I kinda hunger for an angsty one where Evan's lies slip out publicly!" so, here it is





	Exposure

The Monday following the whole… incident at the Murphy’s house, Evan walked into school wanting nothing more than for his hoodie to swallow him up whole. The incident had been on Wednesday, and his mom had let him take Thursday and Friday off for some Obvious Reasons, but he forced himself out of his room when he got up that morning. He knew from much, much experience than no matter how bad he was feeling, isolation would only make things worse.

He kept his eyes on his feet as they shuffled forward, but stopped in his tracks as he realized where he was walking. He had been on autopilot, and looked up to find himself a few feet from the door of the band room. For the past month or two, he had been spending the twelve-ish minutes before the first bell rang hanging out in there with Zoe. Of course, that was out of the question now. Rising on the balls of his feet, he turned to go down a different hallway. But as he turned, the door at the end of it opened and he saw Zoe’s guitar case start to swing through. _No no no no no no_. Quickly, he dashed back the way he came, headed for anywhere that wasn’t the band room.

Evan’s next instinct was to go to the cafeteria where he used to usually find Jared at a corner table in the back. Also now impossible. Honestly, he would be surprised if Jared ever decided to see him again.

Slowly, he made his way up to the second floor, planning fully on sitting in front of his locker and pretending to do homework until the bell. But then he remembered that Alana usually did that, and her locker was in the same hallway as his. He stopped, halfway up the stairs, and considered for a moment. _I guess it’s time for my favorite activity: showing up at homeroom ten minutes early and sitting there silently with the teacher. Great_.

* * *

Entering the cafeteria at lunchtime, Evan made a bee-line for an empty table in the middle of the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Zoe, uncharacteristically alone. For half a second he considered going to sit with her, but he instantly shot the idea down. _No no, stupid idea Evan. Shouldn’t have entered your mind in the first place._

With a thud, he dropped his backpack to the ground and got out his lunch. He wasn’t hungry, but it would look weird if he sat there for twenty-seven minutes with nothing in front of him. As he stared at the thin sandwich, he heard footsteps approaching behind him. He turned around and met the eyes of Sabrina Patel.

“Hi Evan!” she chirped.

“Oh, uh,” he fidgeted in his seat, “Hey Sabrina.”

“My friends and I,” she gestured vaguely behind her to a group of girls waving at a distant table, “Were wondering if you wanted to sit with us? We think what happened last week was terrible. Especially how Zoe broke up with you right after Connor’s note was released. I mean, not to be terrible or anything, but what a bitch, am I right?”

Evan took a deep breath. _So that’s what people are saying_. “No, um, I’d just like to be by myself at the moment. But thanks.” He paused. “And she didn’t dump me. It was…. a mutual thing.”

“Oh, uh,” said Sabrina, visibly off-balance, “Okay then.” She spun on her heel and went back to her table.

Evan stared at the clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick by. Out of boredom, he tuned his ears into a conversation the people at the next table were having.

“... well I still think she shouldn’t be in the class!” said a feminine voice.

“Yeah! I mean, I get it, she’s a talented singer, but a sophomore shouldn’t be in a class meant for upperclassmen! It’s totally inflated her ego,” replied a masculine voice.

“Guys, please. If you talk to her like a friend when you’re around her, then you shouldn’t trash her behind her back. Just be nice,” said a third voice, clearly exasperated.

“Oh come on!” said the first person again, “We’re venting! Plus, you don’t know her as well as we do. You’ve barely talked to her since middle school, she’s _soooo_ annoying now.”

The third person sighed, and there was a notification sound on someone’s phone. “Still, you shouldn’t be disrespectf-”

“Guys, shut up,” interjected the masculine voice, suddenly grave. “You aren’t gonna _believe_ what I’m reading.”

“What is it, Devan?”

“The school newspaper just put a link to a new article on twitter, lemme read it out to you,” said the masculine voice that was apparently named Devan. He cleared his throat and began, “‘I am shocked and horrified about what I am about to tell you. I really mean this, deep in my soul. This is an exposé of all the lies, deceit, and fraud perpetrated by Evan Hansen.’”

Evan’s breath caught in his throat. He started hearing the pinging of phones and people gasping all over the cafeteria. Almost as if his limbs had a mind of their own, he mechanically  took out his phone and pulled up twitter. The words stared up at him, daring him to read. He blinked, and focused.

It read:

 

 

> _I am shocked and horrified about what I am about to tell you. I really mean this, deep in my soul. This is an exposé of all the lies, deceit, and fraud perpetrated by Evan Hansen._
> 
> _Last month, we here at the school newspaper noticed some discrepancies in the emails Alana Beck had been posting to The Connor Project website. Of course, we weren’t the only ones to notice the issues, and Alana assured us along with everyone else that Evan would answer any and all questions we had. Surely we wouldn’t jump to any rash conclusions over a few typos, right? Alana’s insistence that there was nothing wrong has led us to believe that she may be complicit in Evan’s activities, but we do not have solid evidence to back this up. Anyway, we swallowed these excuses for weeks until we realized Evan wasn’t going to give any real answers. That’s when we knew something was really up._
> 
> _Two weeks ago, we decided to hack his school google account. Yes, we know that was immoral, but we did it for the right reasons. It wasn’t difficult, as we were all given accounts in sixth grade with the same password and formulaic username, and few people ever changed them. On his google drive, apart from all the usual school related documents, there were two folders pertaining to Connor Murphy. Two folders of falsified evidence on their friendship. Two folders of lies._
> 
> _The first folder contained drafts of the ‘emails’ that Connor and Evan were meant to have sent to each other. Most we’d already seen, but some hadn’t gone up on The Connor Project page yet. Most of them weren’t the neat finished products we’ve seen, using such awkward language as ‘I miss talking about life and other stuff,’ and ‘smoking drugs,’ suggesting that someone else (Alana Beck?) edited these before sending them out to the public._
> 
> _We hadn’t understood what the second folder was until Wednesday of last week, when Connor’s ‘suicide note’ was released online. It contained about two dozen drafts of that same note, each one progressively darker than the last. Though the content appeared to go through a refinement process with each draft, they all had the same format: Dear Evan Hansen… [I’m sad and today was bad for all these reasons]… Sincerely, you best and dearest friends, me. We know this is going to sound ridiculous, and like we’re reaching for whatever will make the best gossip, but we are forced to believe that Evan Hansen pushed Connor to suicide so that he would be found with the note Evan had planted on him. It would make sense, considering the only time the two were known to have interacted in public was when Connor pushed Evan on the first day of school._
> 
> _Now knowing what we believe, we leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide what you think. Before this year, no one knew who Evan Hansen was. Maybe the loneliness drove him to terrible deeds. It’s a judgement for you to make. Well, you and the American judicial system._

Evan stared at the screen, completely numb. He couldn’t breathe. He was only still sure he was alive from the unmistakable thrum of dread in his veins. The phone slipped from his hands, knocking off the side of the table and clattering to the ground. He continued sitting there, dead to the world, until something hit his back and jerked him back to life.

Turning around, he saw someone had thrown an apple at him. He listened for chuckles that could indicate where the apple came from, but he realized that the lunch room was far quieter than it normally was. He looked up and saw dozens of pairs of eyes on him, looking like they could turn into an angry mob at any moment. A sudden wave of dizziness hit him, but he knew he had to get out of that cafeteria.

Grabbing his bag and lurching out of his seat, he stumbled toward a door as more people launched food at him. Evan ducked out of the room just as a metal lunchbox sailed through the air where his head had just been. He leaned against a wall, waiting for the hallway to stop spinning. The shock had anesthetized him for the time being and he could only imagine what the inside of his head was going to look like once it wore off. He felt sick. He wanted to gome home. He couldn’t move. He wanted his mom. He couldn’t bare the thought of talking to another human. He knew he had only done some of the stuff in that article. He felt crushing guilt that people could even think that he did all of it.

His eyes scanned the hallway, and he saw a bathroom a few feet away. He took a few steps forward, but his knees buckled halfway there and he collapsed on the floor. Crawling the last few feet, he made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up into a toilet. Alone now, the tears came. His body convulsed involuntarily with violent sobs, and he curled up on the bathroom floor, waiting for whenever his lungs decided he was allowed to take a breath. He finally managed to gasp in some air after a minute or two.

He peeled himself up off the floor and staggered over to a mirror. The sight that met him wasn’t one with which he was unfamiliar; he often looked in a mirror and saw himself with a tear-stained face and an expression of woe, but this was the first time he’d had this bad of a breakdown at school. Usually he could get himself out of the building before all this happened. Yes, actually, that was a good idea. Getting out of the building. He needed to go home.

He let himself cry over the sink for a few more minutes, but he remembered he had to go when the loudspeaker began calling, “Evan Hansen to the main office, I repeat, Evan Hansen to the main office.”

Quietly, he opened the bathroom door and darted towards the nearest exit.

* * *

 It had taken him about two minutes of being left alone with his thoughts on the walk home for the shock to wear off. It had taken him about twelve minutes to decide exactly what he would do when he got home. Evan walked into his house, threw his backpack down on the floor, and went straight over to the liquor cabinet. He’d only drunk alcohol three times before: once at his bar mitzvah and twice at Jared’s house because that seemed to be Jared’s plan for the night. But he really needed an escape now. There was also another idea floating around in his head, but he wasn’t going to address that just yet.

He grabbed a bottle of clear liquid that had the label ripped off and took a long sip, oddly enjoying the way it burned his throat, and sank to the floor. He knew he should call Heidi. They had had a long discussion about this on Sunday - _I want you to promise that if anything goes wrong at school, and I mean anything, you will call me and I’ll get you, right? I’ll keep my cellphone on me so you’ll have no trouble in reaching me. I don’t want you to have to handle anything by yourself right now, got it?_ \- but he couldn’t bring himself to get the house phone.

He drank from the bottle at regular intervals and sank into his thoughts. The first image that came to mind was that of a U-Haul truck driving away. He always pretended to his mom that he could barely remember the details of his dad leaving. Of course, that was a barefaced lie he told so she could feel better. Plus, if he told it enough and tried really hard, he could pretend to himself that he didn’t actually remember either. But now, he thought back to the February day.

When he realized what the truck really was, his seven-year-old self thought that that was it. That was the worst a human being could feel in his life. Then when he climbed a tree all by himself last summer, he thought that was as bad as a person could feel. Then again last week. But this feeling he had now was like if you weighed yourself down, sunk to the Mariana Trench, and then realized that it’s lowest points were actually just holograms and you were continuing to sink. He chuckled darkly to himself. At this rate of acceleration, he would be inventing new lows in the human emotional spectrum at every meal.

He shook himself back to the present. Glancing at his wrist, his watch told him it was 1:17. He’d been home for just over half an hour. He looked at the bottle. It had been about three-quarters full when he first picked it up, and it’d a little more than halved in volume since he’d started drinking. It didn’t really have the desired effect. He felt awfully depressed before, and now he still felt awfully depressed as well as awfully drunk.

He tried standing up and - _oh woah there_ \- that was not happening. His head felt heavier than it usually did and his thoughts swam circles around his consciousness. _I was thinking- I had an idea of what I was going to do now- it was- oh_. He remembered another thought he’d had on the walk home. He eyed his backpack on the other side of the room and more of his mother’s words came back to him. The constant admonishments that he shouldn’t keep his xanax in his backpack because either someone would steal it or he’d drop it somewhere.

He looked at his recently healed left arm. He had felt so bad every time he looked at that cast. The guilt of how he got it crushed him everyday for months. He looked back at his backpack.

 _I lost Jared and Alana and Zoe and now everyone knows what I did and nothing can ever be the same and I just want it to_ stop _._

He inched forward on the floor towards his bag, unzipped an outside pocket, reached into the inside pouch, pulled out the orange plastic bottle, and-

The phone on the wall started ringing.

He knew what it would be. Someone would have told his mom at work that her son’s name was all over the news again, then she would have tried his cell phone a few times, unaware it was still on the floor of the school cafeteria, and now she would be starting to panic and calling the house. If she couldn’t reach him here, her next port of call would be Jared’s house.

Evan just stared at the phone, and then back at the pill bottle. Phone. Bottle. Phone. Bottle. He now saw he had a choice, but he didn’t know what to do. What he did know was that whatever his decision turned out to be, it had to be made in the twenty seconds before the phone stopped ringing.

**Author's Note:**

> :'))))))))))))
> 
> visit me on tumblr @bisexual-evanhansen if you need to scream


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